Launch Campaign

> Before running: verify exact flag names with smartlead --help. Flag shapes shown below are illustrative — confirm against the actual CLI.

/launch-campaign

You're doing pre-flight checks on a campaign that's been built, then starting it.

What you need from the user

• Campaign ID to launch
• (Optional) Permission to auto-fix obvious issues vs. just report them

Pre-flight checklist

Run these in order. If any check fails, surface it and ASK before proceeding.

Check 1 — Campaign exists and is in DRAFTING / PAUSED status

smartlead campaigns get  --output json | jq '{id, name, status}'

If status is ACTIVE already, tell the user and stop.

Check 2 — At least 1 sequence step

smartlead campaigns sequences  --output json | jq 'length'

Should return ≥1. Zero = won't send anything.

Check 3 — At least 1 mailbox assigned

smartlead campaigns email-accounts  --output json | jq 'length'

Should return ≥1. Zero = nothing to send from.

Check 4 — Leads uploaded

smartlead leads list  --output json | jq 'length'

Should return ≥1. Zero = ask user if empty start is intentional.

Check 5 — All assigned mailboxes are warmed up

smartlead campaigns email-accounts  --output json | \
  jq -r '.[].email_account_id' | \
  while read mb_id; do
    smartlead accounts get $mb_id --output json | \
      jq -r --arg id "$mb_id" '{id: $id, warmup: .warmup_details.status, reputation: .warmup_details.warmup_reputation}'
  done

Flag any mailbox with warmup.status != ENABLED or `reputation

Should resolve to `open.sleadtrack.com.`. If empty, link wrapping and open pixels will fail.

### Check 7 — Settings sanity

```bash
smartlead campaigns get  --output json | jq '.settings'

Flag if:

• enable_ai_esp_matching: true AND campaign has both Gmail+Outlook senders (see docs/learnings/esp-matching-analysis.md)
• track_settings includes DONT_TRACK_* but recipient list looks audit-aware (Big Tech etc.)
• Schedule looks wrong (sending on weekends, 24/7 window, etc.)

Check 8 — Schedule timezone matches recipient audience

If campaign timezone is America/New_York but lead list is heavy on EU domains, surface it. Sending at 9 AM ET = 3 PM CEST = late afternoon for EU recipients.

Launch decision

Once all checks pass (or user explicitly waves off warnings):

smartlead campaigns start 

Confirm activation:

smartlead campaigns get  --output json | jq '.status'
# Should now show "ACTIVE"

First-hour monitoring

After launch, tell the user to check back in 1-2 hours:

smartlead campaigns analytics 

What to watch:

• Bounce rate: if it crosses 5% in the first hour, PAUSE immediately and triage
• Sends per hour: should match expected throughput from schedule + mailbox count
• Auto-replies / out-of-office: Smartlead handles these (stop-on-auto-reply default)

If something goes wrong post-launch

To stop sending (drains queued sends — this is what you usually want):

smartlead campaigns stop 

NOT pause — pause doesn't drain queued sends and the analytics endpoint lies about it (see docs/learnings/settings-api-quirks.md quirk 6).

Reference

• docs/learnings/settings-api-quirks.md — campaign status verbs, pause-drain behavior
• docs/learnings/esp-matching-analysis.md — why to disable AI ESP matching
• docs/learnings/mailbox-warmup-best-practices.md — what "warmed up" actually means

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: MattSezgin
• Source: MattSezgin/unofficial-smartlead-cli
• License: MIT
• Homepage: https://github.com/MattSezgin/unofficial-smartlead-cli

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.